Page 280 of Power Play

Something hot moved through my chest.

“¡A huevo! Sí, mi hada. Defiende a tu hombre.”

Charm’s eyes snapped to mine, and I knew she understood enough.

I laughed darkly, dragging my thumb over my bottom lip, then straightened my collar like I’d suddenly remembered where we were. Folding my hands in front of me, I gave Lance the kind of smile men like him usually paid lawyers to avoid.

“Oops. My Chicano side slipped out.” I looked at Lance. “Sorry. Let me translate. I told her—fuck yes, my fairy. Defend your man.”

Charm’s breath caught, and holy fuck, the way color climbed her throat almost made me forget we were standing in her father’s study with all his polished bullshit still breathing down our necks. Almost.

Lance’s expression tightened. “That was unnecessary.”

“No,” I said, turning my attention back to Charm because she was the only person in the room who mattered. “What’s unnecessary is using your daughter to threaten me because you don’t have the cojones to threaten me directly.”

Charm sucked in a sharp breath, and Lance went so still the whole room seemed to take one step back with him. He didn’t like that. Men like Lance loved power until someone dragged it into the open and made it ugly where everybody could see.

“You mistake restraint for fear,” he said.

I smiled, slow and mean. “No. I see you for what you are. You’re using your daughter as a weapon against me because you’re a coward.”

Charm made a small sound.

I didn’t look at her. Not yet. If I looked at her, I’d soften, and there wasn’t a soft place left in me for this man.

Lance stepped closer to his desk, one hand resting against the polished edge. “You’re very bold for someone standing in my home.”

“I’ve stood in worse places than this.”

He looked me up and down. “I don’t doubt that.”

The insult slid clean under the words. I felt Charm flinch from across the room, but I didn’t give Lance the satisfaction of reacting to it.

“That’s your problem,” I said. “You think where I come from is the worst thing about me.”

His eyes cooled. “I think where you come from taught you to confuse aggression for strength.”

I laughed beneath my breath because, holy fuck, men like him always found the same words. They heard a man’s voice drop and called it aggression. They felt him refuse to lower his eyes and called it disrespect. They put a leash in their hand, then acted shocked when something with teeth didn’t heel.

“You don’t know a damn thing about what made me strong,” I said.

“I know enough.”

“No, Lance. You know what men like you always know. Enough to sound informed at dinner. Enough to make cruelty feel educated. Enough to ask about my past without getting your hands dirty touching it.”

Charm whispered my name, but I kept going because if this man wanted ugly, I could give him ugly without ever raising my voice.

“You asked about my family at that table like I lost them in a grocery store. You asked about hockey like it was a phase. You looked at my hands like ink was contagious. Then you pulled me in here and dressed up your threat with words like future and focus and stability because you don’t have the guts to say what you mean in front of your daughter.”

Lance’s jaw flexed. “You don’t belong with her.”

There was his truth, dressed ugly enough to respect.

Charm went pale in the doorway.

I smiled wider. “Was that so hard?”

Her mother whispered, “Lance.”